Video 4: Squaring Up Your Quilt

Hello. My name is Aimee Griffin from overallquilter.com.

Welcome to video number 4, Squaring Up Your Quilt. So you’re done with your quilt top, you’ve gotten it quilted, and you’re ready to put your binding on.

The first thing you want to do is, make sure that have nice, straight edges. Sometimes, when you’re quilting, or with your quilting, your borders tend to get a little bit distorted depending on how much quilting you’ve e put on them. So today’s video, I’m going to show you how to take your Square Ruler, and your Long Ruler, and get a nice, straight-edge cut, so that your binding will sit nice and straight.

But before that, I want to show you some patterns that we’ve been working on before a Fling collection, and here they are. Here’s six of twelve current Floral Fling patterns available on overallquilter.com. Just click on the online shop link. My favorite is the Monarch. These are all raw edge appliqué patterns, great for lots of thread play opportunities.

Today’s tools are:

• The Olfa Mat, Rotary cutting mat.
• A 10 ½ inch Square
• A 6 ½ by 24 inch Long Ruler, and
• A 60 mm Rotary Cutter. I like the 60 mm when I’m squaring up because I’m going through multiple layers. Remember, you are going through your top, your batting, as well as your backing. So, having the 60 mm gives me a better grip on my, on my cutting.

So we’re ready to cut our quilt down or trim our quilt down, so that we can add our binding. But we’ve got to make sure first that we are even, all the way through. That our border is even all the way through.  If you’ve started with the 6 ½ inch border, once you’ve taken that seam in, you’re now down to 6 and a ¼. The more quilting you have, the more chances of your border being distorted. So, I’m gonna take my Square Ruler and I’m going to position it so that I can square down to 6 inches all the way around, making sure that my borders all are consistent. Take your 12 ½ or your 10 ½ inch Ruler, Square Ruler, and line up the 6 inch line with the outside border and inner border seam. I’m gonna make sure that, that is nicely lined up. And if you need to wiggle your quilt a little bit, it’s okay. You wanna make sure that you’re nice and straight. My 6-inch line is nice and straight on that seam, and my 6-inch line is nice and straight on this seam. Now I can take my Rotary Cutter, and cut all the way out. And I always start on the corners because I want to use my Square on the corners. So I’m gonna do one corner, and then  I’m going to continue using my 6 ½ inch Ruler, and I’m just going to turn my quilt, and this is a fairly large quilt, so I want to put it on my table. And the other thing you don’t want to do, is have your quilt dragging on the floor because it does pull on you. You want to make sure that you have the entire quilt on the table, which is sometimes kind of hard if you don’t have a big enough space. That’s why I like the large mats. So, I’m gonna take my 6 ½ inch Ruler, I’m gonna find my 6-inch measurement and once again, line that 6-inch line with the seam that’s between my outside border, and my inside border. That last seam that you have there. Now I’m nice and straight, all the way through. Now, if you’ve seen my first video, the cutting video, you’ll know that when I cut a long piece, I cut half way, re-position my hand and the cut the rest of the way. And I’m going to do that again when I’m cutting my borders. Once again, ensure that you have a nice straight line. Start, go half way, Rotary Cutter down, re-position your hand, and cut all the way. And now, we’re going to go ahead and move our quilt down again, and as you see, we are doing it in sections because this is a large quilt. So, I’m going to move my quilt, re-position my quilt, making sure once again that my 6-inch line is sitting right on that seam. And I’m going to cut halfway to my Ruler, re-position my hand, and cut all the way through. Now, as I get closer to the corner, we’ve got one more. One more long Ruler, and then we’ll use our Square Ruler again. And I’ll show you how to do that again, one more time. Take my Long Ruler, find my 6-inch line. Now, not all borders are not 6 ½ inches. So if you’ve got 8 ½ inch border, you’ll need a larger Ruler. You’ll need an 8 ½ inch Ruler. I’m going to go ahead and start, go halfway, re-position my hands, and continue through. Now I’ve gotten to the corner. So I’m going to take my Square Ruler, and once again, I’m going to position that 6-inch on the corner there. Now, my Ruler is not big enough. So before I do that, I’m going to take my Long Ruler one more time, and get that, get that cut just a little bit so that I can use my Square Ruler. Once again, I’m going to find my 6-inch line, here’s my 6-inch line. I’m going to line that up with my corner seam, and I’m going to cut, and then I’m going to cut on top one more time.

And you have a nice 90 degree angle. And you want to do that all the way through, catching or cutting all corners, and all along edges.

And you’ll be ready for your binding.